Thirteen

Jake grunted with pain as Randy helped him step out of his pants and shirt. “Brian said the wound looks like it’s healing beautifully,” she told him. She hung on to him as he sat down on the bed and managed to lay back. She looked around the room. “I’m glad we could stay in our own hotel room tonight. It’s only been six days, but I can’t wait to get back to the J&L, away from all the attention around here.”

“And I’ll be damn glad when I have all my strength back,” Jake grumbled. “Get your gown on and come lie down by me, Randy. The last time you were in bed with me you were fully clothed and about to fall off the edge of the doctor’s cot.”

Randy pulled the covers over him. “I don’t like that sleeping medicine the doctor gave me. I should be awake in case you need something.”

“No, you need to sleep. Now come to bed. We’re leaving in the morning, and we both need rest.”

Randy undressed, and Jake closed his eyes against the sight of her ribs and hip bones sticking out. He wanted to rip apart everything in the room at the sight of her. He’d always loved watching her undress, drinking in the sight of her full breasts and the soft curve of her hips and the small roundness of her belly and the sweet, secret spot between her beautiful legs. She had a perfect bottom that had kept its firm roundness. All those soft curves and the roundness were gone now, and her breasts were not quite so full. He watched her brush out her hair, the beautiful blond tresses he loved to get tangled in his hands.

“Come on to bed, Randy.”

Randy set the brush down and walked around the other side of the bed, away from his wounded side. She watched him warily. “You’re upset.”

“Yeah, you might say that. I’ll be even more upset if you don’t get into this bed.”

Randy turned off the lamp beside the bed and crawled under the covers, lying still on her back and not touching him at first.

Jake sighed deeply, resting an arm over his eyes and struggled to speak calmly. “Randy, I’d like to get back together with the woman who sasses me and bosses me around and who feels good in my arms, the one who is round in all the right places—the one I can tease and laugh with and whose strength makes me stronger. That time we spent at the line shack after what happened last winter—it was beautiful and necessary. You asked me to take it all away and make you mine again, and I damn well did, or at least I thought I did. But something is different. Of all the things we’ve been through, none of it ever made us feel like strangers, but that’s how I feel right now.”

Randy just laid there a silent moment. “Jake, I’m sorry. I’m trying. You know I am. I can’t stand the thought of you being angry with me.”

Jake stared at moonlight on the ceiling. “Baby, I’m not angry. I’m…frustrated. I’m at a loss. When we make love, it’s as though you’re only doing it to prove to yourself I’m right there with you and you don’t have to be afraid, but you aren’t… I don’t know… You aren’t truly wanting me as a husband. I’ve never forced a woman, and I sure as hell won’t start with my own wife. And since this incident here in Boulder, I’ve realized how awful it would have been if I’d died—or even if you’d died at the hands of those men—without us having fixed whatever has gone wrong between us.”

Randy moved a hand sideways to take hold of his. “Jake, how can you possibly think I don’t want you that way anymore? I can’t imagine many women enjoy making love as much as I do with you. You always make it so beautiful. I just… I need to put last winter behind me…somehow. It’s left me…” The tears came then. “I feel like it’s wrong now…to enjoy it…like you’ll think it’s terrible that I still want a man after what they did.”

Jake breathed deeply. God help me. He managed to move an arm beneath her and pull her against his shoulder.

“Randy, I’m your husband. It’s good to enjoy it. What happened doesn’t change the fact that you’re my wife. One of the strongest things we’ve always had between us is practically sharing souls when we make love. Two people can’t get much more intimate than you and I. There isn’t one inch anywhere on your body I haven’t touched or tasted and made love to. I adore every part of you, and nothing makes me happier than knowing I’m pleasing you.”

Randy wiped at her tears. “But…I want to please you.”

Jake frowned, ignoring the pain in his side. His wife was more important. He’d gotten her to talk, and he would do whatever it took to keep her talking. “What are you talking about? You do please me. You know that.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She put a hand over her face. “You just don’t understand.”

Jake was able to turn onto his good side enough to look down at her, his eyes adjusted now to the room bright with moonlight. He touched her face, reached under her chin, and pulled her head up, forcing her to meet his gaze in the soft light. “Randy, there isn’t a whole lot about women I don’t understand, and I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about what I watched my mother go through, and stories from a lot of the women who raised me. So what is it about my own wife I don’t understand?”

She closed her eyes. “I’m afraid to tell you.”

“Since when have you ever been afraid of me?”

She swallowed. “Promise you won’t be upset.”

“You know better.” Jake waited the several long seconds it took her to say what she wanted to say. He wasn’t sure if he dared hope that things might be turning around, but maybe this time she would open up to him.

She squeezed his hand as though trying to hang on. “Jake, that…that thing they did…” Her body jerked in a sudden little sob, the tears punctuating her words. “Jake I can’t make it…go away. Not without…doing something more to take away the ugly. Those three weeks we spent at the line shack…and you made love to me, I lied when I said that made it all better. That’s why…why I—why we feel like strangers. Because we never lie to each other, and I felt the lies between us.” She shivered in another sob. “You’re my Jake…and I’ve been staying close to you to make sure you…don’t leave me because I lied to you. And because you refuse to understand what I really need, and that…embarrasses me and…scares me because I don’t want you angry with me or I might…lose you when I need you most.”

Tears spilled down the sides of her face and into her ears. Jake pulled her closer and kissed her forehead, wiping at her tears with her fingers. “Randy, when have I ever been truly angry with you? You know what you mean to me. And you know I’m not a man who’s surprised by anything. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy again, to be close again. You don’t need to lie to me just because you think it’s what I want to hear. I want you better, so tell me what you need. What don’t I understand?”

“Please don’t get upset.”

“I won’t get upset.”

“But you have before.”

“When?”

“Every time I try to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

She hesitated again before speaking up. “I just think…if it was you…my Jake…if you were the last one to…do that… It would make everything better. Because…you love me and you’d…you’d find a way to make it beautiful because you’ve always said…you had too much respect for me as a person… I mean…you understand that would be hard for me. And yet you would be doing it for me.”

He reminded himself not to react in a way that might scare her away and end the conversation. He realized what she was telling him, but what if it brought back memories that would send her over the edge? “Randy, you’re talking about something that could have a bad effect on you, even though it’s me.”

“No, it won’t.” She sniffed back tears and put her hand over his as he held his to her face. “Jake, I can’t explain why. But if it was you…that’s the memory I would keep. And it would make the ugly way they did it go away because it would be you…my Jake…and it would be an act of love.”

Jake didn’t say anything for a few minutes, weighing what she was asking. Letting this beautiful, proper woman he adored do what she was asking didn’t seem right, even though he’d been totally intimate with her body. It struck him that all he’d ever cared about was making sure she took pleasure in everything he did with her and to her. He got his deep pleasure in return just being inside her, owning her, watching her breathe deeply in utter passion and surrender. If she’d ever once said no, he would have stopped. He’d never even considered she might need to feel the same way—that she needed to please him, to touch him and taste him in her own way. “We’ve talked about this, Randy. Those men did something I’ve never asked of you because I’ve always felt you’re too proper and—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “That’s just it, Jake.” She sniffed in another sob. “They made it so ugly, but you can make it better, because if we…did that…it would be…beautiful and…intimate…and right. I know you’ve never asked that of me because you think I’m too special…but I need you to understand why it would help me get over what happened. You think they made it so ugly…and they did. And when brutal men…do that…it’s called that ugly, ugly word. But no one can call it that…if it’s between a man and wife and out of love. Then the act becomes beautiful.”

Jake could hardly believe his ears. “Randy, what if it just makes things worse for you?”

She shook her head. “It won’t. I just know it won’t. You’re my Jake. You’ll make it beautiful. Don’t tell me you’ve never done that because I know how you grew up. I need you to understand why I need to share that with you. It would make it beautiful for me because everything you do to me is beautiful. I feel the adoration in your every touch. It would erase the ugly. You refuse to do it, and I understand why…and I wouldn’t want to do it often. Maybe even just once. I only know I need to do this, Jake. You have to stop insisting I shouldn’t. It’s what I want, and if it gives you pleasure in return, I’ll feel better about all of it, and I’ll feel closer to you again.”

He pulled her closer. “You have to be sure, Randy. I could lose you completely.”

“I am sure. I’ve been sure ever since we went to the line shack after that horrible attack. We were so intimate, and I kept saying maybe we should do that because it might help, and you kept refusing, thinking I would hate it.”

“You still might.”

She nuzzled her lips against his neck. “It would be you. How could I possibly hate it?”

“Because you aren’t made that way, Randy. Something like that isn’t natural for you.”

“Letting you be so intimate with me wasn’t natural for me either when we first became lovers. But you have a way of loving me that makes it beautiful, and makes it seem so right.”

Jake struggled for the right words. If he said one thing that made her feel ashamed or embarrassed or made her think he didn’t respect what she wanted, he’d lose her again. “Baby, you do whatever you need to do to get better. That’s all I care about.” He wrapped his hands into her hair and kissed her eyes. “And you’re right. I didn’t understand, but I was only thinking of you and trying to keep away the bad memories.”

“I know.”

Jake leaned in and met her mouth in a deep, delicious kiss, groaning then with the thought of what she wanted to do, something that in all their years together he’d never asked of her. “Damn,” he said amid more kisses, “I wish I didn’t have these stitches in my side.” He felt her smiling in the midst of another kiss.

“Now you have something to think about,” she teased. “Something that will give you reason to heal faster.”

There it was—that attempt at the old teasing remarks they always shared when making love. “Well now, here I am in bed with the woman who makes me crazy, and I can’t do anything about it. This is more painful than these damn stitches.”

Randy moved her arms around his neck, and they shared an even deeper kiss. “There are times when I like making you suffer, Jake Harkner. There are a few things you’ve done during our marriage that you deserve to suffer for.”

“I won’t argue that one.” More kisses. Jake gently moved a hand over her breasts through her soft flannel gown. “Tell me again you’re sure, Randy, because when I’m well—”

“I’m sure.”

He ran a thumb over a taut nipple. “And here I thought I might be losing you. I was imagining you turning to another man, someone who wouldn’t put you through the hell my past keeps dredging up to come between us—someone like Peter Brown.”

Randy gasped and pulled away. “Jake Harkner! How could you think such a thing?”

Jake grinned. There was the spark. “Hell, the man has loved you for years. If he got the chance, he’d sweep you right away from me.”

“He wouldn’t get the chance. You’d shoot him first.”

“You bet I would.” Jake grimaced as he managed to lay back down. “Randy, you have to always tell me the truth, understand?”

Randy snuggled closer. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Jake sobered. “Let’s get something straight, and I want to hear it from your own lips. What those men did didn’t change one thing for how I feel about the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. They never touched you. Understand? You know I’m right, so say it.”

She curled tighter against him. “They never touched me.”

“Say it again.”

“They never touched me.” Jake felt her shiver. “They never touched me.” She burst into tears.

Jake held her close, refusing to let on he was in any pain. She needed this. “Let it out, Randy. You’ve been pretending everything is fine, but you still need me in your sights night and day. You’re stronger than that.”

She broke into such heavy sobs that Jake’s eyes teared. “Who is holding you, baby?”

She could barely get the words out. “Jake Harkner.”

“And who do you belong to?”

“Jake Harkner.”

“You bet.” This was the closest she’d come to her old self in months. He loved her more for being too bashful to tell him what she wanted. Thirty-one years together and she sometimes acted like they’d just met. He would have to be so damn careful. How was he going to do what she wanted without bringing back bad memories?

He ran his thumb back and forth over her lips, then leaned over and found her mouth again, invading it with a long, slow kiss that was so deep it was like making love to her with his mouth. He ached to be inside her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m just…” She put a hand to her face. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Randy, who the hell have you been living with all these years?”

She reached under her pillow for a handkerchief and used it to wipe at her eyes. “A man who’s done it all and might laugh at me asking something like that.”

“You know me better.”

“You were so…adamant…about not doing that. It’s okay, Jake. I’m your wife. It’s not disrespect. I just… I don’t know how else to make what they did go away. And I feel better…just telling you.” She wiped at her eyes again. “I know you well enough to know how hard this has been for you. You’ve devoted practically every minute of every day to me since last winter, and I love you for it. I promise to eat better and give you some freedom.”

“I don’t need freedom—not from you. We’ll take things a day at a time, all right? I’ll leave you on your own more often, and the other—it will just happen when it happens. We won’t plan it, and we won’t talk about it. How’s that? We’ll just know when it’s right.”

“Okay.” She snuggled even closer. “You do so much for me, Jake.”

The remark pained him. I’ve done so much TO you, he thought. He would never understand why she’d stayed with him through so much hell. How many times had he thought they’d finally found peace? Yet here he lay healing from a bullet wound, and they were talking about how to help her get over an ugly, brutal attack she’d suffered…because of him…because of his enemies. It was no wonder she’d half lost her mind.